Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Majorthebys Charming and brutal

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Michelle Ridley The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

tao902 A 60 year old woman has recently retired, is mourning the death of a close friend and is looking for meaning in her life. She is introduced to a 'seniors' club as a way of meeting people and participating in new activities. She initially shows little interest until the possibility of an affair with one of the organisers begins.Nice idea for a screenplay, perhaps the screenplay was good, but the end product doesn't realise the potential. The film ultimately plays safe and succeeds only if it was aiming to be 'feel good'. Missed opportunities to become 'interesting' and 'unique' as well as 'bright'.Some humorous moments but not enough for it to be a comedy. Some investigation of characters but not enough for it to be a drama.

Guy THE GOOD DAYS (aka BRIGHT DAYS AHEAD) is another French film about that most French of genres: the well-mannered, middle-class affair. In this case she's a recently retired dentist in a coastal town, who goes to a club for retirees where she takes a computer class because she's fed up of not understanding the machines, only to fall in love with the much younger teacher, who it turns out used to visit the dentists just to watch her. Inevitably it's doomed: her husband finds out and it turns out that her new lover isn't exclusive in his affections. It's a well made and well observed drama with an excellent cast but it isn't anything that anyone who enjoys French films won't have seen before, done better.

terraplane I saw this during a French film festival in London. Both Fanny Ardant and Marion Vernoux were in attendance for a Q&A session afterwards.The basic story is of an older woman in Calais having a brief affair with a younger man after retiring from her job as a dentist and re-discovering the sexual spark missing from her long marriage, before seeing the error of her ways. All this is set in motion because her daughters buy her a membership package to a kind of club for retired people. And therein lies the first of several problems. I cannot believe that a woman with such apparent vitality as the erstwhile Caroline would, even for a moment, consider joining a club for people who have nothing else to do. I also cannot believe that anyone - and especially daughters - would buy such a risible gift in the first place. Maybe it's a French thing.Caroline then spends much time either in the company of a bunch of ageing nonentities, who seem to enjoy the idea of hurtling towards eternity via the purgatory of a seniors club, or in the lustful embrace of a younger bloke and his energetic tumescence, while her husband - who still works as a dentist and therefore has a rewarding, if somewhat boring life - appears to have all the charisma of a stunned hamster. But at least he's not filling other women's cavities while his wife is playing the lusty pink oboe instead of playing bingo in the afternoon. The story takes the usual turns and follows most of the usual clichés about such affairs until the film ends with another unlikely scenario. We all get old, we all need something to live for and we all need a bit of a spark in our relationships, but do we need yet another fairly uninteresting film to remind us of our mortality and apparent fragility when time starts to accelerate us ever faster towards our ultimate - and unavoidable - oblivion?Not really.The film is nicely photographed but ultimately it fails to engage on any level. The story is thin, the characters are not really developed beyond the cliché level and the script doesn't give the actors much to work with.After the screening Fanny Ardant gave s few fairly unilluminating comments in reply to some hideously embarrassing questions from a bloke who thought that asking her whether she changed the sound of her voice for the film was an example of an interesting question.Fanny's reply was "I was acting".

Piccinina I'm a longtime fan of Ardant from way back when I first saw her in a French TV "feuilleton" (Les Dames de la Cote). I wish she'd had a better script here. There were too many clichés and stereotypes. For me the story felt as flat as her hair color. Perhaps the bad blonde was meant to age her. She's much better and sexier as a brunette. In my opinion the best performance was by Patrick Chesnais as her husband. He was pitch perfect. There was a lot of potential for a more interesting film and it failed. But then again I haven't read the source material (book) so perhaps there just wasn't enough there to begin with. I'm glad that I saw it, but was disappointed despite the fact that it's always good to see Fanny.